1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a group of bioinformatically detectable novel viral oligonucleotides and to a group of bioinformatically detectable novel human oligonucleotides associated with viral infections, both are identified here as “Genomic Address Messenger” (GAM) oligonucleotides.
All of abovementioned oligonucleotides are believed to be related to the microRNA (miRNA) group of oligonucleotides.
2. Description of Prior Art
miRNA oligonucleotides are short ˜22 nucleotide (nt)-long, non-coding, regulatory RNA oligonucleotides that are found in a wide range of species. miRNA oligonucleotides are believed to function as specific gene translation repressors and are sometimes involved in cell differentiation.
The ability to detect novel miRNA oligonucleotides is limited by the methodologies used to detect such oligonucleotides. All miRNA oligonucleotides identified so far either present a visibly discernable whole body phenotype, as do Lin-4 and Let-7 (Wightman, B., Ha, I., and Ruvkun, G., Cell 75: 855-862 (1993); Reinhart et al. Nature 403: 901-906 (2000)), or produce sufficient quantities of RNA so as to be detected by standard molecular biological techniques.
Ninety-three miRNA oligonucleotides have been discovered in several species (Lau et al., Science 294: 858-862 (2001), Lagos-Quintana et al., Science 294: 853-858 (2001)) by sequencing a limited number of clones (300 by Lau and 100 by Lagos-Quintana) of size-fractionated small segments of RNA. miRNAs that were detected in these studies therefore represent the more prevalent among the miRNA oligonucleotide family and cannot be much rarer than 1% of all small ˜20 nt-long RNA oligonucleotides.
The aforementioned studies provide no basis for the detection of miRNA oligonucleotides which either do not present a visually discernable whole body phenotype, or are rare (e.g. rarer than 0.1% of all of the size-fractionated, ˜20 nt-long RNA segments that were expressed in the tissues examined), and therefore do not produce large enough quantities of RNA to be detected by standard biological techniques.
To date, miRNA oligonucleotides have not been detected in viruses.
The following U.S. patents relate to bioinformatic detection of genes: U.S. Pat. No. 348,935, entitled “Statistical algorithms for folding and target accessibility prediction and design of nucleic acids”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,369,195, entitled “Prostate-specific gene for diagnosis, prognosis and management of prostate cancer”, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,291,666 entitled “Spike tissue-specific promoter”, each of which is hereby incorporated by reference herein.